Just a quick reply from me. I don't use sub species as I don't see the point for me.
Out of interest if you search the photos for Australian Magpie ( White backed ) in Canberra most look like hybrids.
I updated my packs the other day and when I enter Australian Raven I get two options, Australian Raven and Australian Raven ( Western ), no option for ( Eastern ).
Shorty
On Fri, Dec 5, 2025 at 1:06 PM Rob Geraghty <> wrote:
Hi Kim and Shorty,
So if someone edits their list in ebird on the web to change “Australian Raven” to the sub-species “Australian Raven (Eastern)”, that subspecies is automatically
added to the “Bird Packs” which are downloaded to the app on everyone’s phone? When I originally noticed a subspecies appearing in ebird, I think it was “Grey Fantail (alisteri)” and I was told that it was preferred to select the sub-species. Now it appears
that I should only select the sub-species where more than one is present in a location. I find this a little confusing, but happy to avoid separating sub-species to people with more time and skill than I.
Kim, FWIW, the bird which I find the most difficult in the ACT is the Magpie, because in the ACT there’s four options, and deciding between the white-backed,
black-backed and hybrid in Canberra is difficult. There’s a lot of variability in the plumage of our local magpies.
Regards,
Rob
From: Kim Farley [
Sent: Wednesday, 3 December 2025 8:30 PM
To: shorty <>
Cc: Rob Geraghty <>; Canberra Birds <m("lists.canberrabirds.org.au","canberrabirds");" target="_blank">>; Zeb's Photography
<>; Zac flegg <m("gmail.com","zwflegg");" target="_blank">>; ben milbourne <m("hotmail.com","milbourneben");" target="_blank">>
Subject: Re: [Canberrabirds] Birds which aren't rare - FW: [eBird Alert] Australian Capital Territory eBird Rare Bird Alerts
Thank you Shorty. You are correct. I am very much aware of this issue. It is affecting the reporting of around half a dozen species and has arisen recently where some eBirders are choosing subspecies rather than the species itself. In theory
this is fine, but in nearly all cases the subspecies being selected is the only one present in the ACT - so there is no real benefit in selecting these for ACT Checklists. I am currently working through the eBird filters to remove the rarity flag on subspecies
where only one occurs here. This will remove them from the Rare Birds Alerts.
In the longer term, I do not recommend assigning subspecies locally when only one subspecies occurs here. For a start, it complicates eBird Species Maps. For example, to understand the full occurrence of Australian Raven in the ACT, two
Species Maps would be needed - one for Aust Raven and another for Aust Raven (Eastern). Luckily we do not have many subspecies records as yet - so remediation is still possible.
Striated Pardalote and Silvereye are the only two species where more than one subspecies occurs in the ACT - though I am happy to be corrected on that.
Writing as eBird reviewer
On Wed, 3 Dec 2025, 6:21 pm shorty via Canberrabirds, <> wrote:
I am Sure Kim will chime in on this but I suspect that the observer is adding the ssp to their list and as such the filters will be set to zero hence the rare bird assignment to rare. I don't get why people are doing this as when eBird
update the ssp it will adjust our sightings as such. So much extra work for nothing IMO for our reviewer.
On Wed, Dec 3, 2025 at 6:07 PM Rob Geraghty via Canberrabirds <> wrote:
Hi All,
I gather that the additional descriptions recently added to many birds in
ebird are the reason why they are appearing as "rare"? Because so far,
there's few records of things like "Mistletoebird (Australian)" as opposed
to "Mistletoebird"?
I noticed that there's now an option for "Australian Raven (Eastern)"
instead of "Australian Raven", as another example, although I didn't see
that come up as rare.
Presumably the less specific names will be deprecated eventually?
See below.
-----Original Message-----
From: [mailto:m("birds.cornell.edu","ebird-alert");" target="_blank">]
Sent: Wednesday, 3 December 2025 3:02 PM
To:
Subject: [eBird Alert] Australian Capital Territory Rare Bird Alert <daily>
*** Species Summary:
- Black-tailed Nativehen (2 reports)
- Grey Shrikethrush (Brown-backed) (2 reports)
- Satin Flycatcher (1 report)
- Singing Bushlark (Australasian) (1 report)
- Brown Songlark (1 report)
- Silvereye (East Australian) (1 report)
- Mistletoebird (Australian) (1 report)
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